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It starts with an invitation: Maximizing survey email impact

August 27, 2015

Wayne Gretzky and Michael Scott said “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” If you think of survey responses as goals, then survey invitations are the shots that you take, so you better make them count.

Yet survey invitations are way too frequently sent as an afterthought, with little creativity or strategy put into them. But for many campaigns where email is the top survey distribution channel, they become your #1 influencer on response rates.

If your post-project results uncover painfully low email open and click-through rates, follow the tips below to boost end results:

Subject Lines

Subject lines like “Customer satisfaction survey” or “We want your feedback” make the contents of the email clear, but they do nothing to motivate recipients to open it.

Set clear expectations with your subject lines, and use personalization to grab attention. Try one of the below formats, which range from direct to teasers. Some of them will work well for you if you tailor and perfect them over time:

“Get 20% off your next purchase at (store) by taking a quick survey”

“About your trip to (store) on (date)…”

“Take a 3-minute survey and get 20% off your next purchase”

“(first name), we want to hear from you!

Incentivize

It’s just an accepted fact that you will boost your response rates significantly by offering an incentive for respondents. Typical incentives are discounts off future purchases or chances to win something significant. But that doesn’t mean that you have to use incentives every time – short product reviews don’t usually need incentives.

Set Expectations

The last thing you want to do is irritate a customer by sending them to a survey that takes forever to get through. Response rates drop dramatically after 10 minutes in a survey because respondents don’t have that much time to spare. Recipients want to know what they’ll be getting when they click the button: use terms like “5-question survey” and “It will take no more than 5 minutes”.

Get To The Point

You’re asking recipients to spend their time taking your survey. Don’t waste their time with lengthy emails (or surveys). Honestly they’re mostly interested in the incentive attached and how long it’ll take to get it. You have 10-15 seconds to get those two points across before you’ve lost most of them.

Mobile-Optimize

You have no control over where a recipient will open the email, so don’t send a survey that they can’t immediately complete from whatever device they’re using. If you’re using mobile-friendly survey software, tell them that in the email – many have probably had prior experiences getting turned off by mobile unfriendly surveys post-click.

Start The Survey in The Email

Try embedding the first survey question directly in the email to show them that it’ll be fun and easy. This technique could produce higher click-throughs and response rates, so try it out.